The present invention relates generally to the field of programmed software agents and in particular to a new and useful software agent for retrieving changing information from predetermined networked web sites.
There are many different types of networks presently known and existing. Local area networks (LANs) and wide area networks (WANS) are typically internal to an organization. These networks are usually isolated from outside users or other networks, but may be interconnected. The Internet is a large global network of interconnected computers.
A particular computer or a file containing information on such a computer may be found through an “address” or URL (uniform resource locator). Any computer which is connected to a network, and especially, the Internet, must have an address which identifies it to the other computers on the network.
Computers which are permanently connected to a network may have files identified by specific URLs which can be accessed by other, remote computer users also connected to the network. When the files contain text and graphics in HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) or similar languages, these files are often referred to as “web pages”. Web pages can be viewed by different users with a software application known as a web browser, such as Netscape's NAVIGATOR browser or Microsoft's INTERNET EXPLORER browser. Each web page that is stored on one of these networked computers has a distinctive URL which can consistently be used to locate the web page and its current content for display in a browser application window.
Web page files which are in HTML or a similar language contain formatting and presentation instructions that can be used by a remote user's web browser to display the content of the web page on their local computer. The text and graphics on the web page that the remote user actually sees are typically referred to as “content”.
In recent years, the Internet computer network has become increasingly commercial and continues to grow in size at a rapid rate. It is possible to find massive amounts of information on trivial subjects in a short period of time using the Internet. However, due to the commercial nature of some sites, advertising has become a major portion of many web sites. On some web pages, the amount of advertising can dwarf the information content of the page. Other pages contain so much information, it is difficult for a user to discern which information is most relevant to him.
The formatting of web pages using HTML and related languages divides content into particular sections, or structures. Often, only one or two of the structures of a particular web page will contain useful information content. The remainder of the page may be advertising or irrelevant information.
Search engines exist to help users find information content on web pages by indexing the pages of owners who register with the search engine against the terms which appear in their web pages. When a user accesses a search engine, the terms entered into the search engine are compared to the previously indexed terms and a listing of hyperlinks to potentially relevant sites is presented to the user. The listing of hyperlinks is generated based on the search engines best guess of which sites are most relevant using a weighting of the search terms. A search engine is not an exceptionally accurate way to find information. But, when a source location is not known, it provides a good starting point.
Agent software, sometimes referred to as “intelligent agents”, “robots”, “bots” or “spiders” is generally known in the art of computers. The term intelligent agent can be used to mean a broad range of software programs having pre-programmed logic for performing particular functions. The particular functions, programming and purpose vary from agent to agent. Most software referred to as intelligent agents operates on many different computers across a network. That is, the agent functions are distributed and require the cooperation of at least two computers.
Agents may be used to perform commercial transactions, such as the intelligent agent disclosed by U.S. Pat. No. 5,983,200. The agent is used to execute tasks electronically using given information and learned information. The agent quickly performs actions across a network which would otherwise be very time-consuming for the user who enabled the agent.
Software agents which can be programmed to perform particular functions are thus very useful and have many different applications.
Agent software executing on a user's personal computer which can retrieve, format and display content from many different remote sources to the user's local personal computer is not presently known.